Part 97 (1/2)
RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.
Then there is a large cla.s.s,--men, mostly; males, at least,--who, having spent all their substance and much of their health in excess of tobacco-using and whiskey-drinking, apply to the physician for aid, ”in charity, for G.o.d's sake,” as they have nothing with which to pay him, and usually a numerous family dependent upon their miserable labor for sustenance. Woe to the physician who gets a reputation for benevolence at this day and generation of ”cheek.”
”Doctor, I hope you _will_ do something for my distress,” said a gentlemanly-dressed individual, not many months ago. ”I have but sixteen cents in my pocket, and I owe for four weeks' board, and am out of employment.” He was a play actor. Could I say no to so honest a statement of his low state of finance? I treated him faithfully, without a penny.
Not many weeks afterwards I knew of his going away and stopping two days at a hotel with a strange woman.
Still there are others who are quite able, but who think it no sin to cheat a doctor by misrepresenting their inability to pay. They work upon the sympathies of the benevolent doctor; they ”would willingly pay a hundred dollars, if they had it,” etc.; and thus slip off without compensating him for his services. Every physician knows that I have not overstated the above.
There is also a large cla.s.s of patients, with whom, like the ”old clo'
Jew,” wisdom, brain work, advice, go for nothing. You must represent their case as perfectly fearful, and do something perfectly awful for them, or you are of no account.
Selden, who understood these failings in mankind vastly well, gives them a sly hit in his ”Table Talk.” If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to an honest, judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint it with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure, haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine to be an ordinary one. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, ”Your leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off; and you will die unless you do something that I could tell you,” what listening there would be to this man!
”O, for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content for your pains.”
THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN.
Scenes from ”Practice of a New York Surgeon.”
I have abridged the following truthful story from the above work, which book I recommend to the perusal of all lovers of moral and entertaining literature.
_The Summons._--The experienced physician knows, from the sound of the door bell, whether it is the representative of wealth or penury who is outside at the bell-pull.
The doctor opened the door to the _timid_ summons.
”Will you please come and see my mother?” asked a little delicate and thinly-dressed girl. ”She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I'm afraid she's going to die.” The poor little heart was swelling with grief.
Almost ashamed as I donned my heavy coat, for the night was bitter cold, and the s.h.i.+vering little girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes and scanty dress, I hurried along to the abode of poverty.
_The Tenement._--The faint rays of a candle issuing from an upper window of one of those wretched wooden buildings, guided us to the invalid's tenement, and as we approached the house the little girl ran ahead of me, and stood s.h.i.+vering in the doorway, while I carefully walked up the rickety steps.
Poor as the tenement was, its cleanliness was noticeable, from the fact that it was isolated from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more accessible apartments almost in common with the swine which are fed from their very doorsteps.
_The Invalid._--A violent paroxysm of coughing had just seized the lady, and I waited some moments before I could observe her features. She had surely seen better days. There were about her and the little apartment evidences of refinement, from her own tidy person to the little sweet rosebush in full bloom, and the faultless white board, and the scanty, though snowy curtains that shaded the attic window, which produced a melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding required me to address my patient.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CALL AT THE TENEMENT.]
Her countenance had evidently been beautiful; an immense ma.s.s of auburn hair, such as t.i.tian loved to paint, yet shaded her brow; the eyes were large and l.u.s.trous; the nose was slightly aquiline, the lips thin; and every feature bespoke the woman of a highly refined and intellectual nature. When her gaze met mine for an instant, I felt that pity was misplaced in the emotions which swelled my heart, for the lofty dignity, almost _hauteur_, in that look, would have become an empress in reduced circ.u.mstances.
”Go, dearest, to your little bed, and close the door, my love,” she said, turning to the child.
The girl lingered an instant. I stood between the dying mother and her child. I turned aside whilst their lips met in that holy kiss that a dying mother only can give, ay, and a prayer that she alone can breathe.
When the little creature had withdrawn, by a narrow door scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the rough, whitewashed boards that divided her little closet from the main room, the mother turned her earnest gaze upon me, and said,--
”I have troubled you, doctor, not with the view of taxing your kindness to any extent, but to ask how long I may yet linger,”--placing her hand on her wasted bosom,--”depending for every service upon that little fragile creature, for whom alone I have, I fear, a selfish desire to live.”
I could not answer immediately. My heart was too full. I had recognized the dreadful malady at a glance. She was far gone with consumption.